


Watching Over You

by Ias



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Gen, Implied Relationships, POV Minor Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-05
Updated: 2012-12-05
Packaged: 2017-11-20 10:13:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/584248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has done his best to keep his promise to Sam and make a life for himself with Lisa and Ben. Castiel just wants Dean to be happy, but though he won't let himself interfere, he can't seem to stay away either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watching Over You

“Ben’s been getting home from school late these days.” Dean pauses in the action of mashing a tomato into the chopping board to look up at Lisa. She’s leaning on the counter, her hands still wet from washing dishes, with her hair pulled up into a messy ponytail. 

“Has he?” Dean asks carefully. 

Lisa looks at him. “You haven’t noticed?” A swell of familiar guilt takes Dean by storm. He’s still falling into the rhythms of domestic life, adjusting to the idea of routines. The fact that he can open a calendar, point at a given weekday and know he’ll be in the exact same place is surreal and strangely terrifying. Not that he’ll tell Lisa that. He’s going to commit to being normal until it actually happens. If he doesn’t talk about the problem, it doesn’t have to exist. 

“I guess not,” is what he says, offering a weak smile. Lisa accepts it without further comment, her fingers working a towel around the edge of a plate. Dean goes back to preparing the vegetables for dinner tonight, grateful for something to occupy his hands. 

“I’m starting to worry. Do you think he’s in any kind of trouble?”

Lettuce tears apart under Dean’s fingers. “Like what kind of trouble?”

“I don’t know. Gangs.” 

“Lisa, the only gang around here is the group of old ladies that chain smokes outside the supermarket and buys up all the Jäger whenever they get a new shipment.”

“I know, I know.” Lisa pauses and leans forward, her hands gripping the sides of the sink like an anchor as she stares out the window. “He’s my kid. Being paranoid is part of the package.” 

Dean smiled tiredly. “I know how you feel.” It isn’t a lie. Ben isn’t the first kid he’s helped to raise. But he can’t give Ben a .45 when he’s having trouble sleeping, can’t sit up and tell him stories because the only ones Dean knows belong in a world that only exists somewhere far outside the walls of this house. This is so different from what he knows, and that doesn’t make it bad. But it does make it difficult. Dean leaves the mangled remains of the vegetables on the chopping board (and so much skill with a knife, too, you’d think he could put it to use on something other than flesh) and steps up behind Lisa. His arms find their way around her waist like they’re on a track. 

“We’ll talk to him,” he says, nestling his chin above her shoulder and following her gaze out the window. The tree outside is dropping its leaves. He thinks he’ll have to rake them soon. 

“We’ll talk,” Lisa agrees. 

 

Like he does every day, Ben takes a detour on the way home from school. He slips around a corner fence, veering off the main street to wander down a side road lined with maple trees. After five minutes he reaches the park, a stretch of mowed lawn with a rusty jungle gym off to the side. It’s a place he used to go a lot when he was younger, and that he’s stopped by often in the past few months.

He sits on a bench and checks his phone-- he's slightly early, but that's fine. He doesn't mind waiting. There’s no one there but a couple of toddlers playing on the slide while their babysitter watches. As always, there’s something strangely peaceful here that goes deeper than the lazy afternoon. The sun is warm, and he gives in to the urge to tilt his head back and close his eyes. 

There’s a ruffle of sound and a brush of air, and when he opens his eyes the man is sitting next to him. He keeps a careful distance, staring at the kids on the playground with a closed expression. His shoulders are slouched under the weight of something old and heavy that Ben can’t understand. Ben smiles. 

“Hey,” he says. The man turns to look at him and offers a smile in return, though it’s tired and fragile like paper that’s been folded too thin at the creases. 

“Hello Ben,” he says. There’s a sort of relief in his voice, like being here hurts but he’s glad of it anyways. Like picking at a scab. “How was your day?” As usual he asks the question tentatively, like he’s toeing over a line and is always ready to jump back.

Ben doesn’t mind these talks. He knows the man needs them in some way, needs the reassurance or maybe the reminder. He’s stuck in an orbit, dancing around the edges of Dean’s new life but never daring to cross them. Ben’s young but not stupid, knows that sometimes there are things that just don’t fit together no matter how hard you try to make them. There’s no place in Dean’s new life for this man who had survived his old one, but he’s still caught in his pull. Ben wants to help however he can, because he knows it’s what Dean would want. If there’s one thing Ben has learned from him, it’s to help people no matter what. 

The first time they spoke was back at the beginning, a few weeks after Dean moved back in. Ben was making his way home from school when he noticed him standing on the sidewalk outside of the house. He looked lost, or maybe in pain, and on a strange impulse Ben had walked up to him and asked if he was looking for someone. The man had seemed surprised to be spoken to, but had asked if Dean Winchester lived here. When Ben said yes the man was quiet, and Ben asked if he wanted to see him. With a smile that could have shattered the man said that it was probably best if he didn’t. Ben told him he could come back any time. The man thanked him and left after asking him not to tell Dean he had been there. Ben said he wouldn’t. He recognized the looks of someone hanging by the tips of their fingers. He’d been living with Dean, after all. 

That was a while ago. Now their talks are easier, like something between friends. They sit there for a while like they usually do, talking and sharing in the silence equally. It should be weird, but somehow it isn’t. Ben talks about school, his friends, his mom, and Dean. Ben talks a lot about Dean. The man rarely asks, but he doesn’t need to. Ben talks about Dean learning to make lasagna, Dean teaching him how to fix the Impala, Dean and the new life he’s carving out for himself. Once Ben asked how the two of them knew each other. The man had smiled that broken-glass smile and said that they were friends. Ben tried not to ask about it from then on.

They stay for as long as possible before Ben knows he has to get home. As he walks down the corridor of trees back to the main road, he turns around and glances back towards the park. The man is still there, his trench coat stirring slightly in the breeze as he watches Ben with his head tilted to the side and a distant smile. Seeing Ben looking, he nods. A second later he’s gone.

As he walks up the driveway to his house a few minutes later, Ben finds himself thinking back on something that Dean had told him, a long time ago, when he was worried about something he can’t even remember. He’d been sitting in the passenger seat of the Impala as Dean drove him to school, and Ben felt the warm air curling over his face through the open window as Dean spoke. 

“Don’t you worry, man. Everything’s going to work out just fine,” he had said, his eyes staring through the windshield at something that wasn’t there. “When I was a kid my mom always used to say that angels were watching over me. That may sound pretty cheesy, but you know what? I’ll bet they’re watching over you too.” He grinned, a wistful edge cutting across his teeth. “And take it from me, some of those guys aren’t all that bad.” 

Ben smiles distantly as he makes his way up the front steps. He thinks maybe Dean was right.


End file.
